Penitentiary
by xDiax
Summary: As the war of the four elements rage on, something evil is sent as a result of human corruption. Now the whole human race has had its sanity destroyed, constantly hearing the screaming of the Evil One in the back of their minds. No one is free to think an


**Prologue**

_Alaric rose gradually from the ashen, snowy earth, watching as colours ranging from crimson to ginger to a deep violet mixed with sapphire steadily seeping across the newly awakened sky, seeming to waver as every second ended. His feet were planted deeply in the pallid snow, small, thick icicles lazily creeping up his scrawny legs. The demon's slight smile slipped into a frown as the dry, chapped lips parted into a yawn. His dark crimson eyes flashed towards the half vampire, whose sturdy body was firmly planted in the ashen soil precariously close to the cliff. He too had let his lips fall into a casual frown for Alaric to spot._

'_Why the sullen face, Jin?'_

_The vampire turned around, as if seeing Alaric for the first time. He casually pushed dark, messy hair behind his ears, cobalt eyes sparkling hazily. _

'_The world is dying, Alaric. No one will ever cease to hear the screams of the elements at war until their mind is at peace.'_

_Alaric watched as Jin made his way back into the carriage they were travelling in. He gravely looked down at the furious ocean as it snarled malevolently to the twirling wind, dancing sombrely under the growling sun. The demon youth could even feel the feeble earth weakening below him as it struggled to maintain its grasp together. Tiny cracks were managing to emerge even through the thick, pallid snow. _

_Jin was right; the world was dying. The people in the land had failed to maintain their sanity. Their minds were never at peace._

_Inside the stable carriage, safe from the harsh battles of the furious snow, a middle aged half bred vampire watched soberly from a grubby window as the land gradually illuminated from the black dimness of dawn. The man yawned, his eyes flickering as he struggled to keep them open. Travelling with Alaric had forced him to change his nocturnal habits. Still in mid yawn, the man made his way to a nearby desk, sinking gradually down into a chair. He picked up the quill lying nearby, and began to scratch sharp, pointy letters onto the fine, thin paper. What was being written he did not know. Perhaps it was a letter to the future, or a diary._

To the future world, where freedom of thought is taken for granted, where the mind is constantly at peace, where everyone and everything has found and lives peacefully in their nirvana.

_The man paused, taking a moment to observe the lines he had just written, printed in small, scrawny writing. Hesitantly, he placed the quill back onto the clean paper._

The world you live in was not always how it is. I am writing in a place where the world is grey and dim. People have failed in their attempt to maintain their sanity, ever since the war between the four elements; the sun, sea, wind and earth, was declared. We are the living dead; there is no hope for the future in our generation. As if the freak and sometimes even fatal weather conditions are enough for us to believe there is a war going on between the elements, we must also constantly hear the piercing screams and whispering anguish of Desdemona in our minds. She speaks to us each. Our minds are tattered and tainted; clearly, the elements are not the only ones at war, but our conscience also holds a raging war within itself. It drives us to bear insanity.

Who is Desdemona? We do not know, but we are slaves to her evil. Some say she was sent here as a punishment from the elements for human corruption. She watches our every move. She lives on in our minds even though we killed her years ago. Half breeds only get episodes of the insanity, since they are not purely human. Half breeds are common here, but those unfortunate pure humans have insanity that stretches far beyond anything I could imagine. Those who have pure blood of a non-human do not hear the screaming at all. Alaric is a pure demon, yet he claims to hear screaming sometimes. Strange things are happening. We are the crazy, we are the mentally ill. Our mental anguish enhances our insanity. She never leaves us alone. We constantly hear her voice, whispering menacingly in the back of our minds. It is always there. We can still function, but it is always there. We see, hear and smell things that are not there. We do not know what is real and what is not anymore. Our minds are never at peace except when we sleep, though that is rare. Inside there is a raging war of hell.

Hell is an ironic word. In the old days it used to mean the opposite to heaven and nirvana; a place where everyone and everything is miserable. Yet we have discovered hell, it is a real place, and now it is our refuge against the raging grasp of insanity. But we cannot stay there long, for Desdemona can read our thoughts. She sets her dragons into this world to brutally harm us if we are seen involved in any suspicious activity. They lurk in large numbers around open spaces, constantly watching our every move, our every breath. Desdemona does not want us to go so far. She uses us to create a prison out of this world so she can watch us writhe. We have no peace, we have no freedom. We are the living dead.

We have decided this must stop. Yet we need the key components to bring final peace into this war; darkness, light, the elements themselves, and beasts. We need four who can control each component. We have already found our darkness component; that is Alaric, as he has the ability to shadow coerce. Yet there is no way we could find a beast summoner in this world. Alaric is claiming to be having visions of someone from the other world who could have such ability. We have been watching here for quite some time. Years, actually. But people from the other world are artificial; they are brought up in the virtual world where the people live in oblivion. Or is it us who live in oblivion? After all, what _can _we hear beyond the constant screaming in our heads?

_The man paused for the second time, this time placing the quill back on the desk, neatly beside the sheets of paper. He rose from the wooden seat, clutching his forehead for a minute to calm the dizziness. A harsh blizzard was coming; he could sense it. Someone must have angered Desdemona with contradictory thoughts. Pushing open the wooden door, the dark haired half vampire called softly in the wind to Alaric, through the misty haze that foretold a snow storm. Before sitting back down, he picked up the pen once more to add a final paragraph to the letter._

To the future world, where freedom of thought is taken for granted, where the mind is constantly at peace, where everyone and everything has found and lives peacefully in their nirvana… Remember us, remember our story. Appreciate your sanity, appreciate your peaceful mind. Freedom is the ability to think that six plus six is fifteen. We do not have that freedom.

Signing off,

_Jin_

**Chapter One**

The sun set in ascending motion, copious rays of light beginning to growl ferociously behind its hazy refuge of sinister, snowy clouds. Sheba listened to the typical wake up call of the morning birds outside, as her chest rose and fell lightly to match her breathing. The girl's eyes slowly flickered open, her cold, clammy palms gently feeling the rustling sheets of the bed she was lying on. She guessed it was about five thirty in the morning, but how long she had lied there in her stone cold bed she did not know. Sheba looked blankly around her bedroom, at the cracked walls, at the battered blindfold that feebly attempted to block the sun from getting past the single, grubby window. A few ripped posters clung hopelessly to the flaking walls; beside it was a single scruffy desk with bits of tattered paper scattered around it. Small, scrawny writing, which resembled something rather similar to scribble, was printed on each sheet of paper as random lyrics that had come into Sheba's head. One thing Sheba knew was that she was incredibly bad at being a teenager.

Breathing now quite heavily, Sheba slowly rose from her bed, supporting her lower back to lessen the sharp pain. Back problems were not all that common in teenagers. She stumbled forward in the near dark, almost tripping over her guitar. The girl leant against the wall for support, observing her pale, slender fingers, which were raw and battered from playing the instrument almost all night in a desperate attempt to play herself to sleep. Yet the aching fatigue in Sheba's legs, arms and head, told her that during the four hours she had lied in bed after putting down the guitar clearly did not involve any sleep.

Sheba's eyes flickered to the clock before she stumbled blindly forwards again. It was almost six o'clock. Dragging her feet, the girl managed to achieve the slow walk out of her bedroom, down the grimy walls of the apartment, and into the small, rusting bathroom. In the reflection of the clear, stainless mirror, Sheba looked positively scrawny in the long top five sizes too big for her, and her baggy tracksuit pants. Thick, wavy locks of flaxen coloured hair fell just below her shoulders, the almost fringe roughly failing to meet her eyebrows. Light sapphire eyes glinted softly as sunlight was spilled through the window.

Sheba glanced sulkily at the heavy, black bags marked clearly under her eyes, and promptly dumped her head in the cold, icy water swirling around in the sink. She pulled on some jeans and made a feeble attempt to throw up her hair and catch it in the elastic, before giving up and leaving bits to fall out, withdrawing from the elastic's grasp.

It was much lighter in the kitchen; the sun was shown quite clearly beaming through the large window that greeted the living room and kitchen. The Earth had turned quite quickly in the past twenty minutes. Sheba clambered onto the white kitchen bench, reaching for the coffee and her mug. Gentle sobbing noises came from the wooden kitchen table, and Sheba looked up to see her father with his head in his hands, his shoulders shaking vibrantly. It was most likely that sleep had managed to neglect him as well. Perhaps he had not slept for longer than Sheba hadn't. It was no surprise; the death of her sister still shone quite clearly in both of their minds; a stain that refused to be scrubbed into nonexistance. Her father had not told Sheba how she had died, but she remembered plainly coming home to the sound of ambulance sirens. The mysterious death of her sister was similar to that of the mysterious disappearance of her mother years ago, but Sheba thought she knew quite well why her mother had left.

She flicked the kettle on, and the distinct noise of electrical heating up water filled the small room. The girl was too young to remember her mother much, just that she was young, very young, and that she had wonderful flowing, long auburn hair. She remembered the sadness on her face after her parents had fought.

Sheba heard the faint sound of her father stirring, slowly raising his head as he became aware of Sheba's presence in the kitchen. His red and blotchy, glistening face almost cringed as her saw her. He mumbled feebly to himself and carried on sitting, ignoring her.

'How did you sleep?' asked Sheba, attempting to be friendly.

'I didn't,' he replied flatly, watching Sheba slide carefully off the bench to pour the steaming, hot water into a coffee filled mug.

Sheba would have replied with a "me neither", but she had already stopped listening, and instead was watching the clear liquid in the sink close around her slender fingers.

There was something else, too. It was Sheba's fifteenth birthday in a couple of days, but her father had probably forgotten. She was not going to remind him, either; he had forgotten the year before, too, ever since the death of her sister. But before that he did not care much for birthdays, either. The tragedy had caused her father to turn quiet, instead of keeping loud and angry. But Sheba did not mind about the birthday, much less care. In fact, she quite preferred it that way. She hated birthdays. It seemed so ridiculous to celebrate another year of aging.

Sheba brought the steaming mug of coffee to her lips, feeling the burning water touch and sizzle on her tongue, and the bitter taste of caffeine slowly dissolving in her mouth. The girl rested the mug back on the bench, careful not to spill any of her precious stack of caffeine. Her eyes flickered back over to her father, still slumped on the table, but this time his sparkling sapphire eyes were on hers.

'You have school today, you know,' he stated blankly, his back slowly beginning to resemble something straight.

Sheba's eyes shifted to the floor, 'What, again?'

Her father raised his eyebrow. 'It goes for five days a week.'

Vague memories of high school came tumbling into Sheba's head. It was the place she was forced to go to after she could no longer be home schooled by her sister. The place with all the cloned girls and the boys with intelligence levels of below human capability. The girls, however, annoyed Sheba especially. They strutted around the school in large groups, with their varnished nails, their mascara, their pink cherry lip gloss and their hair smelling of nauseating artificial fruity substances. And every time they passed Sheba in the corridor their overly glossed lips would curl upwards, their noses would wrinkle, and their facial expression would change into something similar to that of someone who was touching something very disgusting.

Sheba's lips curled into a similar expression, as she put her coffee down once more and made her way out the door, flinging her heavy bag over her shoulder on the way out.

The howling wind was barely radiant as it prowled around the packed train station. Sheba was wearing her usual too big jeans, the t-shirt she slept in, plus two jumpers, a jacket and several pairs of stockings. She was rugged up in the largest amount of clothes she could fit over her scrawny figure, but she was still cold. The wind always found a way in. Even in the crowded, stuffy train station.

Sheba observed, with a slight sickening, the cloned girls making their way near her station. They passed her with a glance similar to that of Sheba's.

'Oh, are you actually coming to school today, Sheba?'

Sheba could barely hear the quiet sneers of their voices, as one of them accidentally on purpose drove their bag into Sheba's side when passing by, looking back at her with a haughty stare. Sheba cheerfully replied by presenting them with a finger positioned somewhere in the middle, just like she did almost every other day. She also noticed the fingernails of all of them, carefully curved, cut and varnished very neatly, and she wondered why they bothered.

It was a bland morning – Sheba was still standing there in the same train station, waiting for the same train, just like she did almost every other day. The train station felt unexpectedly empty, in an odd way. The escalators, sprinkled with businessmen and women catching early trains to work, seemed to devour each and every person who stepped onto its mechanical rolling.

Curiously, Sheba observed the scruffy graffiti scratched onto the wooden bench. It mainly consisted of quotes from movies, initials, various messages of teenage angst, and the occasional scribbled line of "Lucy for Jason". Pulling out a short, jagged knife, Sheba carefully carved in her own contribution; "Peace and Love" – but only because she knew it would annoy the other gothic graffitists.


End file.
